The building I’m in looks just like the city outside. It’s a library but it’s full of people, stone, glass, and metal, and the shelves are heighted and arranged just like the structures off the street.

This is my sandbox. I’m trying out a new self, and I want to keep the experiment contained, focused for now.

There is an architect named Rich Shepherd my age who looks just like me in the same city. I’ve always had a visual way of interacting and an appreciation for space. Good find.

“Hello, Maggie,” I said to the the curly-haired, ginger, early-forties librarian behind the counter.

“Sih-r,” she broke during that single syllable like: sih-she took off her glasses and dipped her chin while keeping eye contact-r. Her shoulders jerked up and down a bit, along with her hips. This one’s sensitive, potentially attracted, and/or neurologically defective. Any case, she’s a find!

“First, I like your scarf—it looks breathable. Second, I’m an architect and I can’t help but be inspired by this place as such—or you.” I smile.

She dries up instantly—it’s obvious.

“Just saying.” I walk on to fiction.

There, I see a girl. I say she’s a girl because she looks about twenty. I’m twenty-seven at the time.

She’s reading Cat’s Cradle, which I don’t like at all—too “why did he write this,” for me. But I understand the need to taste overrated stink in order to recognize it, and that’s where she is at. She’s cracking up laughing.

“I’m reading The Da Vinci Code. So exhilarating.” I wasn’t, and it sucked; I just took a cynical, sixty-forty chance.

“Fuck off, bitch.” She says, never taking her eyes off the page.

“I’m an architect, you know…”

She’s not listening.

On to self-help; desperation can’t hurt.

There she is—reading Dr. Phil, around forty-six years old, no ring on her finger, once attractive but rendered underwhelming by excessive empathy. I’m gittin’ laid tonight!

“I love him. I love the suspense element of his show: ‘what you nied to do is…more Dr. Phil after words from our sponsors…Welch’s grape juice is now fortified with chia seed <lip smack>…what’s right for you!’ that bitterness of minor abandonment warms my heart and sweetens the inevitable sweetness every time.”

“You’re a sardonic dickhead. Dr. Phil is a genius. Why are your pants stuffed? Why are you wearing sunglasses? Why are you wearing a fake torso that makes you look forty pounds heavier than you are? Seriously, who does all that at the same time?”

After what seemed like no time I made it to the whistle-whetting spot, which can be conditionally modified that way depending on my intentions. My intention was to continue rhapsodizing upon the rhapsodies around and within me and there were likely to be some unmistakably living sources of music to reinforce the roll I was on at the Cantina, so I yessed while outside the door the notion that the Cantina was consistent with abstracting cadences and songs—which I was especially inclined to abstract now—and moving in space and moving above thought accordingly. I can think about it now because I really felt it and really drank it and really became it then—felt and drank and became the music abstracted, became the field capturing all the piping-hot, underappreciated delight around and within me.

Buttressed of course by my bright-green, orange-laced shoes I swagger-shuffled into the Cantina like FOOSH-FOOSH-SHICKA-NOW-HOOSH—THICKA-HOW and all eyes converged on me.

I was not that handsome, I was not that tall, I was not popping an obvious erection, I did not have a sweat-stain resembling a urine-stain on my pants; I was just the only one FOOSH-FOOSH-SHICKA-NOW-HOOSH—THICKA-HOWing and so the other patrons did not know how to respond—a single note of confusion was all I picked up for a moment. There was a band, and that propped up my momentum; their leader blasted his trumpet as if it was the world’s only recourse.

I stopped playing sounds mentally to allow for the trumpet solo, to be here, now, for the enlightened man’s contribution: he knew what he was doing, and my gratitude couldn’t wait. I danced all the time, though, “In the land of Mars…” I slithered up and down for the solo’s benefit and benefit it did because everyone started dancing along—electrified by my influence sure but ultimately by potential energy going active, kinetic, as it should when the context conduces; the context conduced so the moment arose and potential went actual and that’s how “should happen” became “did happen.”

I got a fez-tip from the enlightened hornist probably for catalyzing what he’d envisioned or at least progress toward what he envisioned when staring himself down in the green room, staring down those eyes, that face; the prayer “let me come to the fore tonight,” was answered with more than a little help from me. I’d helped him reach in and channel what was most deeply there—perhaps his make-up; perhaps his buried, primordial, metaphysical character; perhaps the pinnacle of his then-current self.

As I leisurely danced and jived my way to the bar, the other animates participating in this inner-jubilee went about their business rhythmically, like DOW-DOW-DINKA-DOW-DOW–DINKA-DOW, DOW-DOW-DINKA-DOW-DOW–DINKA-DOW…and whenever they failed to inspire me I could inspire myself and them with rotations of my bright-green, orange-laced sneakers on the hot, sandy, red bridge in the hot, starry night: my FOOSH-FOOSH-TICKA-NOW-DOW–TICKA-WOW harmonized beautifully with the organic percussion ensemble gifted to me by presence of mind, awareness of here and now. The beauty of here and now had never been clearer to me now that it was tied to this beautiful fucking music and beautiful fucking dancing and the beautiful fucking colors and the beautiful fucking heat and the beautiful dancing cosmoxen I’m so lucky to share a lifetime with—their dusty, starry-white, starry-orange coats will forever light up my brain, my life—and I didn’t need anything except to be free, by myself, and among the music of the world and the responses of my body and other bodies therein—more music and more harmonizing, rhythmic motion made for, by, and of the beauties of here and now. Even the voice that distinctly cried “nice shoes, FOCK-in’ idiot,” said it in a way I have to admit made a pleasing contribution to the symphony-choir-ensemble of the ecosystem.

I did not want to reach the Cantina by the time I got there; however I knew it could only build on the theme that was developing as long as I could keep some block-headed, rhythmically-inclined, starry-white, starry-orange, star-dusty, hot-glowing cosmoxen in my mind’s eye and the timpanis and the maracas and “nice shoes, FOCK-in’ idiot” in my mind’s ear. The road had been very kind to me; the road helped me start building a life that is now indelible, and it helped me realize that there’s nothing like the beauty of here-and-now sweetened by sensory candy like bright-green shoes with orange laces and rhythmically-inclined, starry-white, starry-orange, star-dusty, hot-glowing cosmoxen which I must say again I am so -ucking lucky to know!

Far as I knew she just stood, her wild eyes watching me shroud myself in dust and leave her purview.

I would head to the Cantina. I would have to walk a while, walk a distance, and that was all right by me. My satisfied, warmed “ahhs” would follow some welcome work.

It was hot and starry when I walked across the red rock bridge one quarter mile in. Played connect the stars much of the time I walked, but that was always. For now freedom was the same. There was just the fact of difference with no upshot I could feel.

On my way, there were many so many faces and murmurs that it felt familiar. There were many cosmoxen, which are oxen crossbred with stars, carrying burdens, swaying their blocky heads, dipping their chins, swooping up each side in time so that when I saw it I thought DOWDOWDINKA, DOWDOWDINKA, DOWDOWDINKA…

The timpani comes in and then the maracas, and I can’t stop making music out of all I see and hear. There’s a party, an organic dance party—street performers ; pedestrians; bystanders fall in line—happening and the stars are out and it’s hot and it’s 2256 and damn I’m lucky to be alive and damn I’m lucky to be free and damn I’m lucky to be treated to this lighted, musical delight of delights.

Soh I was ouht with some friends, see, and they tried to get me to drink some putrid shite wine titled “Ohhhhhld Faht.” And naturally I said “sorry, fohlks, but I’m partial to Cohrnflower Labyrinth wine. Don’t you just love the name? Problem with Ohhhhhld Faht is that it simultaneously reminds me of The Great Gohhhhhtsby, you know, Old Spohhhhhrt, and that well-wrought stohhhhry about the jizzy fahhhhht Ricky took in his unwashed mouth.”

My friends, and I had been trying for this sooohhhh long, finally offered dick-in-dick, all of them. I don’t know if it was the Cohhhhhhnflower Labyrinth or the Old Spohhhht reference or the Ricky’s Dead, Time for a Shopreference but either way he-yes I thought I was on my way to that pantwrenching prohspect of dick-in-dick yes.

So then I said “yehhhhs, I’ll go off and pry myself ready for you bucks with my mini jaws of life. Be back in a flash!”

Got back to the table, stretched just right, and they were gone, sadly, must have had other engagements. I still have yet to collect on those offers. I call all the time about it, leave messages, all that yes and still I’m waiting and still I’m sipping my Cohhhhhhrnflower Labyrinth, drunk on it and visions of platonic dick-in-dick yes. I’ll let you all know!

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I write the voices--inner and outer; sometimes nonhuman, inanimate voices loudly or quietly or silently or nonverbally telling me what I see and hear and taste and smell and feel and think, how others might sense and feel and think under real or imagined circumstances and how that all hangs together--that contribute to my inner life.